Nityananda

I became consciously aware of Nityananda through Muktananda’s book The Play of Consciousness. Some time after I read the book I moved to the cabin above Nelson, B.C. While meditating one day I became aware of a figure coming into my field of view (my eyes were closed). As it came closer I realized it was Nityananda. He kept coming closer and finally merged himself with me, doing a kind of overlay, like two flashlight beams blending together.

Nityananda

I then experienced myself starting to spin in place, for want of a better term, feeling like I was spinning faster and faster until I/we “launched” and I experienced myself/ourselves moving rapidly through space: I could see stars, nebulae, galaxies; at one point I picked out the constellation of Orion. We seemed to be accelerating, and quickly moved into a kind of blue-white light, and eventually came into a world of very intense blue-white light with many beings. I had the overwhelming sense that it was to this world that I really belonged, and that Nityananda was showing me my home so that I could remember. I got the sense that this was what Muktananda had called “Siddha Loka”. After this experience I would feel Nityananda around me quite often, especially when I was meditating.

Perhaps ten years later, I was living on Vancouver Island, B.C., and feeling quite depressed and lonely. I was sitting in my bedroom, very lonely, wishing I had a woman in my life and thinking that it was never going to happen—I was very polarized off to the male side. I stood up, and suddenly off to my right I saw Nityananda, plain as day, moving toward me. I was wide awake, standing up, eyes open, looking at my bedroom, and I saw him move toward me, merge into me without wiping out my awareness, but so that I could see the world through his eyes—and I saw every female as myself, I saw every male as myself, but especially every female (females of all sorts, human and non-human). About a day later my awareness returned to “normal”—note the quotes. I can always return to that state at will now because of what he gave me. He was reminding me of what I knew, and what I’d experienced before, but what I’d forgotten in my unbalanced emotional state.

About five or six years ago I was trying to make sense of my early life, my life as a child and young person, the experiences I’d had, and so on. I knew that to some extent I was interpreting myself and my spiritual experiences through the eyes of my parents and my family, that I was forgetting events, and that I was unable to form some kind of continuity with what I’ve experienced as an adult. I went to bed one night with those thoughts in mind: that I knew I didn’t understand my early life, that I was forgetting and misinterpreting certain things, and that I really wanted to get things figured out. I hadn’t been asleep very long (judging by the clock when I woke up shortly after) when I had a very intense vivid dream: I was in a small room, perhaps the size of a small bedroom, and on the wall was a large picture of Nityananda. As I looked at the picture, it started to move, to come alive, and Nityananda stepped out of the picture and into the room. He sat down on one of the chairs in the room, and motioned to me to sit on another. And we talked. We talked almost the entire night. I woke up perhaps three or four times during the night, once because of my cat, and each time I was fully awake, got out of bed, went to the bathroom, got a drink of water, fed my cat, and so on. And each time when I went back to bed I would immediately be back in the room with Nityananda as soon as I closed my eyes. Nityananda showed me my childhood, my early life, and it was if he was picking it up piece by piece and with each piece was saying, “look at it this way. Change your perspective, try seeing it from this angle.” And he told me about what it was like for him to be in the world, how hard it was for him to live a physical life, and I could see parallels between what he was telling me about his life and my own life—not so much in the actual events of our respective lives, but in the way it felt to be here.

I cannot express in words how grateful I am for that conversation. I sat there talking to Nityananda, feeling that he loved me very much and that I loved him just as much, and that he was intimately concerned about my well being. It was like I was talking to an older brother who was telling me about his life when he was my age, letting me know that I wasn’t alone. Incredible. I still sense him around me, and I always feel his love and caring for me.